Protection
by sangga
Summary: It used to be her job. Uphold the law. Protect the innocent. She's still doing that."


Title: Protection

Author: sangga

Rating: G

Disclaimer: No-brainer. If I owned this stuff, would I be slugging away after hours on my computer for zero wage? Really, just…think about it.

Email: sangga55@hotmail.com

Archive: At your pleasure – please email.

Summary: _"It used to be her job. Uphold the law. Protect the innocent. She's still doing that."_

Note: It took me a while to figure out what exactly Evelyn Santos _did_. She actually does have an office to perform apart from just providing eye-candy – if only the writers saw it that way. So here's my take on Evie's real job. Also, I know it's never been alluded to so far, but for some reason I've got this thing in my brain that Evie has a four-year old son. It could be non-canon, it could be something I read in a fic or something – I dunno. But I'm working it that way, cos it feels right. 

Spoilers: I've only seen eps 1-4.

Feedback: _'Lies are the mortar that bind the savage individual man into the social masonry.' H.G. Wells_

****

Protection

****

i.

He looks terrible. She doesn't think twice about saying so.

"You look terrible."

"Gee, Evie. Thanks."

"No problem. You eating? Sleeping?"

He takes off his jacket slowly, hangs it over the back of a chair.

"I'm fine. Really. I am."

"Great. That's great. I'm glad to hear that."

She knows he's not sleeping. Sometimes she gets calls in the middle of the night.

****

ii.

Sometimes she's filing. Transcribing interviews. She files them under Male/Female/Children, alphabetically.

She spends a lot of time on the internet. Searching for stuff. She keeps good records on the computer, but everything has to be in hard copy as well – Alva's insistent.

She wonders that they don't get broken into – but probably the relevant agencies don't take them seriously anyway. There was the plane thing. Relevant agencies contacted them about _that_. But look how that turned out. Neat. Forgotten. The relevant agencies would probably like to see everything resolve itself so neatly.

****

iii.

__

What am I doing here?

She used to be a cop. Talking to people, listening, watching. She's still watching.

Alva is driven. He wants everything now, not tomorrow. It's like he's impatient for the apocolypse. He's driven by rage. Tightly coiled anger. He doesn't talk about his childhood.

Paul is haunted. A bit like a ghost himself, he wafts in and out of the office on a wave of exhaustion. He is spiritually exhausted. He is in the world, but not of it. He looks like a foot soldier – shoes dragging, weary, heavy in the shoulders.

****

iv.

She wants to get out of the office, out of the city. Go hiking. Take Matty and go someplace near water, a lake, a stream. Sit under trees, dappled by sun, take off her shoes. Listen to the insects in the grass.

She feels like being in the city is bad for her son. Like it's a form of neglect. She feels some guilt about that.

She wonders who coined the term 'urban renewal' – must've been someone with a sense of humour. The city never renews itself. It just goes deeper, tunnels underground, dirt rising to the surface to colour the streets grimy, dust the pavements and the signs, trickle in the gutters. The city is like a giant misshapen tree, gnarled with age, deep-rooted. Burrowing into the dark, dislodging things best left undisturbed.

****

v.

She invites Paul to dinner at her place. Just him and her and Matty, in the bright kitchen. She wants to see him under the lights. It's just as she guessed – he looks drawn, worn out. Skin like ceramic. Tan porcelain.

But dinner is good. Matt helps with the chopping up, and they eat penne bolognaise, and Paul looks comfortable, relaxed even.

She feels a little ashamed at the shabbiness of the apartment, but she squashes it. It's not 'Modern Interiors', but the place is clean, neat. It's airy and light enough and has a warm feeling – a sense of lived-in-ness, of home. She refuses to think of it as being all that she can afford. She gets her meagre salary from Alva, and she has a little bit of pension from the Force – it's enough.

She longs for a garden.

****

vi.

She helps Paul take some files back to his place. He juggles the box of papers in one arm while holding the door.

"Come on in."

She doesn't want to. She feels it at the entrance to the apartment, like you can smell meat that's gone rotten.

__

Bad.

Something else lives here.

But she has to step over the lintel to put the files down. She takes a breath before first-footing.

"Thanks for helping me with this stuff. Just…anywhere. Here."

He lifts a stack off her pile so it doesn't topple over on the desk. She smiles her thanks but her face feels frozen.

__

Courage.

He knows. _Has_ to know.

She thinks that if her grandmother were here, the old woman would be crossing herself, muttering prayers. Part of her wants to ignore the feeling, shake it off. Another part just wants to get out fast.

"So. This is…nice."

Paul grins.

"I wouldn't go that far. I'd like to paint the walls white, but I think the landlord would have a heart attack. I have enough trouble just getting him to cough up for repairs."

"Mm."

She thinks that a coat of white paint probably wouldn't do much except dress up the darkness. Better to see the place in its natural state. No deceptively pretty pictures. No illusions.

"How'd you find this place?"

He shrugs.

"Got lucky. Nothing in the papers for weeks, and then – bam. I think it found me."

__

I'll bet.

He asks her if she wants a coffee, but she excuses herself. The apartment feels like it's smothering her. She feels like an intruder, and she knows she'll have to come back and face it sometime soon, but she doesn't have the energy for it right at the moment. She'll need to fortify herself first.

But soon, though.

Sometime soon.

****

vii.

It used to be her job. Uphold the law. Protect the innocent.

She's still doing that.

****

viii.

Trying to figure out Alva is harder. It's harder because it's deeper, and he cements over it every day with words and more words.

"…but if you tie it back to the other case, the woman with the stigmata, you can see the links. If we could just get the research on…"

"Alva."

"…I'm sure we could make a solid case for the…"

"_Alva_."

"Yes?"

"Alva, stop talking for a minute."

He gets miffed, of course. But he's very tolerant. She doesn't care if he puts her admonitions down to petty female grievances, or personal differences, or just plain bad manners. But it's only that she can see what's going on, can see him better, when he doesn't maintain a constant hum of background chatter.

It's like fog clearing.

****

ix.

He calls her up in the middle of the night for no reason, but it's always the same reason.

He sees something, hears something, experiences something – his sirens go off, and he calls her. Needs to touch base, feel real, make contact with something that isn't ephemeral. Her life, her existence – particularly the mundane aspects – are Paul's light in the dark. Phantoms might come out of the walls but the world still turns, life goes on, people get up, get dressed, cook breakfast, talk, work, shop, eat, and he's still a part of that, he's not going crazy.

Not. Going. Crazy.

****

x.

She invites Alva over to watch movies. They watch them all together – her, Alva, Matty. Kids movies – good, bad, heroes, heroines, neat endings and happily ever afters. Dorothy gets back to Kansas, and toys return to their child-owners, and dogs find their way home.

Evie makes popcorn and Matty sits on the floor with Alva, who takes off his jacket and shoes. Evie curls up on the couch and watches them. They throw popcorn at each other and she laughs and mentions vacuuming before bedtime. And Matty gets caught up in the adventures, and Alva watches the screen and lets himself imagine for a moment that anything is possible, that the light can triumph over the dark, that goodness can prevail, that being in a family can be more than just a lesson in frank brutality and horror.

****

xi.

Part of her believes that it's important that she sustains these two men simply because they're human beings, and they deserve to be cared for and protected and given sustenance like anybody else.

And another part of her whispers that it's because of their importance, and she feels a personal revulsion of her mercenariness. She feels like a general who marshals the troops for war, overseeing the men because a man who's tired or underfed or going out of his mind is a poor soldier. She can't help experiencing a certain level of guilt - in spite of being one of the soldiers herself - that's she's the one soothing the hurts and calming the nerves and maintaining the home front, but still patting these two men on the shoulder and then sending them back out, back to the battle, back to the Good Fight.

Back to the trenches.

Back to the dark places.

****

xii.

He calls her up in the middle of the night for no reason, and one night she gets the call she's been anticipating. It's three a.m., which is the time of night when the breath of all sleepers skips a rhythm, when most heart attacks occur, when both inner and outer noises seem magnified. When ghosts come out.

The phone brays on the bedside table. Being accustomed to late night phone calls of all descriptions, she's immediately awake. Her voice is still a little sleep-tinted.

"Yes?"

"Evie, it's me."

"Hi." She brushes hair off her face. "Are you okay?"

There's a long pause, in which she can hear Paul's breathing. Also, a soft hissing down the line, a little garbled echo which might be either faulty wiring or the faint chorus of the damned.

"Paul?"

"I'm…I'm here." He seems, as on other occasions, to think twice about rash late-night phone calls. "I'm sorry. Look, it's fine, I'll just –"

"Do you want me to come over?"

She really has been anticipating this. Matty is with her mother. She waits on the line with ghosts hissing at her while Paul gathers his courage. Weird, how he can sleep in that apartment, night in, night out, but still need courage to ask for her help in dealing with it. His reply is barely above a whisper.

"Yes."

"I'll be over in ten minutes."

She feels relieved and apprehensive at the same time. The prospect of entering his apartment is not enticing, to say the least.

She dresses quickly and spends precious spare dollars persuading the cab driver to speed up.

****

xiii.

Alva gets so caught up in things.

He flies around the office in a nimbus whirl, grabbing books off shelves, scanning his notes, reaching for the phone with one hand and scrabbling for a pen with the other. He speaks German with his first contact, then switches to French. It's in these moments that his flame burns bright, that she can see the diamond inside of him, each facet flashing hot.

But it's also in these moments that he turns to ask her _'Is it right? Do you feel it?'_, and she knows that she is the compass. His energy is like a laser primed to fire – brilliant and pure and ultimately destructive – but it's a weapon over which he has limited control. His vision clouds over with old memories, old terrors. Loss of focus.

And Evie, who still has a secret envy of his renaissance skills – all that knowledge and study which never fell within her own sphere of opportunity – it's Evie in the end who's got the clarity. She's the sight.

It's why he asks her.

__

Do you feel it?

His mother would have said of Evie, "she has the right of it". And without even consciously remembering that phrase, that memory of his mother, it's still something that Alva instinctively recognizes. His own focus blurred, he reaches for the right.

He doesn't realize that it's the reason he hired her in the first place.

****

xiv.

__

The battle is for his mind, and there can be no objective witnesses.

He answers the door in sweatpants and a t-shirt as white as his face. She just smiles, and it's almost enough. She can see him thinking, _You can go home now_. But the air that washes out from behind the open door is icy, and she knows that she can't just turn around and walk away. Not at this point.

He looks apprehensive though. For her, for himself – who knows. Evie grins.

"Do you still want me to come in?"

Slight embarrassment on his face. She knows there's a curious mix in his brain – partly the idea that he should be able to deal with this himself, partly the hesitancy that comes with not knowing whether you're crossing a line. The work/private-life boundary, and whether her presence inside his apartment at three a.m. contravenes some unspoken code of office behaviour. Ultimately the line was crossed when he made the call, so he just smiles tentatively and says, "Sure", and opens the door wider.

And then half-expecting the door to pull from his grasp and slam shut in her face as she steps inside, but no, it's too subtle for that. That would be something concrete. He could point to that, hold it up as an example, as proof_. See? Not going crazy_.

Evie doesn't need proof, she needs coffee. He offers, she accepts. Plus, it's something to do in the conversational lull.

Paul makes good coffee. His kitchen is small and uncluttered. Evie stands by the lintel, specifying her preferences for cream and sugar and watching for clues. Little things. His spoons are in odd places. He has to search for the milk; it's in the cupboard under the sink. She doubts he put it there himself. She figures that if she looks around the rest of the apartment – like the kitchen, spare, spartan – she'll find a dozen things he thought he'd misplaced.

It makes him look fumbling, confused. She thinks it's no wonder he comes in to work every day with that air of perplexity. He probably spends a lot of time searching for his own belongings.

So now the coffee and they sit on opposite ends of the couch and sip in silence until she feels sorry for him and breaks through the barriers.

"I'm glad you called."

"Are you?" Paul's face then is pathetic. "I wouldn't be."

"I told you before I'm happy to help." She shrugs calmly. "If having me here helps, then…"

"Yeah, but you shouldn't get broken sleep every time I have bad dreams."

__

Does want to deal with it himself, she notes. And hoping she'll agree with him, so they can both underwrite it as 'bad dreams', in there with 'lightening strikes' and 'flash floods'. Sorry, Paul – not this time. He should know better anyway.

Let the battle begin.

"This is more than just bad dreams, Paul."

"No it isn't." He puts down the coffee to rub his face, emphatic but exhausted. "Maybe. It feels like… God, maybe. I don't know anymore."

Evie thinks she knows, but she wants to hear it.

"Tell me."

His eyes dart around for a second, afraid of something overhearing. Spilling your guts in the dragon's lair. His voice, hoarse and low.

"It's like a dream. I mean, it starts like a dream. You know, that moment…when you're almost asleep?"

He appeals for understanding and she nods. She knows.

"It's like that. When I'm kind of half-dozing. It's dark, and…I hear things. Voices talking. Or doors opening and closing. Sometimes…I see things. People."

"Was it Tommy?"

She's very gentle, but he's so nervous.

"Yeah. I woke up – I mean, I looked up. He was standing at the…the foot of the bed. But it started before that…"

He's rambling a little and she lets him. Dreams are like that too – rambling, incoherent. He adds details of movement in other rooms, cupboard doors that swing, strange liquids in the faucets, shadows in the corners, and her gaze flits over the apartment compulsively between his sentences. Half-afraid of what she'll see, but there's nothing there – her presence has made the shadows innocuous. For the moment.

Paul relates it all haltingly, then stutters to a finish, and she feels pity again but squashes it because you don't give friends and fellow soldiers pity. She looks at him over the dregs of her coffee.

"Paul, I think…maybe it's time you considered getting another apartment."

This direct attack tips the milk off the bench in the kitchen and they both start. She follows him to the mess and watches him search for dishtowels. It's while she's helping mop up that she sees his eyes narrow – slow awareness. They're ringing out milky towels at the sink together when he says:

"You think it might help?"

"Yes."

She nods, and keeps the jiggling sink cupboard door closed with her knee. He doesn't seem to notice.

"I don't know, Evie. Things have a habit of following me around."

She pats him on the shoulder firmly.

"I think you should sleep on it."

He looks kind of surprised, but it's the first thing she noticed – the tiredness – and she wants to tackle the obvious problems first. She gives him a dry towel for his hands, and then takes control.

"We can talk a bit more later, but you should sleep now. It's nearly four – I think you can catch a few more hours before dawn. Really."

He acquiesces, he's grateful. She brushes that off. She's already heading for the couch, and the novel in her bag, toeing off her shoes near the coffee table.

He gives her a throw rug, which she appreciates, but she doesn't think she'll get any more sleep tonight. She's working, and you don't sleep on the night watch. She thinks briefly about sitting up with Matty, nights spent changing sheets and emptying buckets of sick, and calling hospital emergency rooms. On one level, this seems easy by comparison.

He smiles at her softly, then goes back to bed. She reads.

Alone in the living room.

Maybe her grandmother would have lit the candles, begun the prayers and shaken her rosary for protection. But in her new line of work, Evie has made a discovery. The light in the dark is more than talismans – the light emanates from within, and flows from the ordinariness of life lived as usual. Drink your coffee. Read your book. Adjust your glasses and untie your hair. And relax, because darkness feeds on fear.

She reads, and ignores the shadows.

She sucks on a barley sugar, and ignores the wrapper twisting itself into knots on the table.

And when the cold air behind her shoulders begins to distract her, she pulls a bottle of polish out of her bag and starts painting her toenails.

For the insult, a few books fall of the shelf near the door.

It takes a while for her to do both feet. She checks her watch. One hour down. Nearly two to go.

She makes herself a fresh coffee. Refusing to hunt for the milk again, she opts for black. She looks around the living room, but everything's quiet.

More reading.

Inevitably, she has to use the bathroom, which is a challenge. Bathrooms make her nervous, and the bloodspatter on the mirror isn't a help. She hums, and splashes water on her face, but makes sure she keeps her eyes uncovered when she towels her face dry. She keeps the door open.

Passing the bedroom she hears Paul whimpering in his sleep. Faint murmurs from inside. She puts a palm on the door, thinking, and everything goes quiet.

She goes back to reading and cold coffee, but it can't last. Paul makes a noise in the bedroom, and she decides she needs to get closer.

Tiptoe into his room. Settle briefly in a chair, but it's too uncomfortable, and he's sweating and tossing. Closer.

She sits on the empty side of the bed, then slides her feet up. Back against the headboard. She's brought her book, but there's no lamp on her side – naturally – so she rests the book on her stomach and tries to nestle into the extra pillow. Her feet are freezing so she carefully draws them under the covers. Watches Paul.

He's on his side, back towards her, and when he shivers in his sleep the fabric of his t-shirt stretches over his shoulders. Shadows around the room seem to cloud and settle near him. Evie thinks about what it means to be his bodyguard, and samples the perks – inhales the masculine aroma of the sheets.

There's no more whispers in the room, and he seems to be quieting now, breathing more evenly. She wants to stop watching him but she needs to stay awake, so she tries reading by moonlight, angling the pages towards the window. When he rolls over and curls up near her hip, like a child, she gives up. Sinks back to think, and observe the fineness of his eyelashes, the flop of his hair on the pillow, the play of shadows on his face. She wonders how he'll react when he wakes up in the morning to find her beside him. She wonders how long it's been since he slept beside a woman.

In a few hours time, they can discuss finding him a new apartment. But right now, she is the most ordinary of talismans.

****

xv.

Sometimes she's filing. Sometimes she's talking on the phone. Or making transcripts of interviews. Or researching. Or something.

Watching Alva. Keeping tabs on Paul.

Right now, she's checking the 'Apartments Vacant' section of the newspaper. Nothing promising as yet. But she knows a church a few blocks downtown with a priest who might be able to help.

She thinks about the mountains – lakes, trees, sun-dappled grass. She could get a little place, find some local work, make a garden. If you grow your own vegetables you don't need so much money. If they left now, Matty would be starting in a new place for his first year of school in the spring, which wouldn't be such a harsh transition.

They could be happy.

She puts down her pen for a second and looks around the office. Everything looks dusty – she can see the motes spiraling in the air. Alva is standing, and Paul is seated at the table, with a small pile of opened books in front of them. They are having some quiet discussion about a recent case. Alva seems calmer, and Paul looks more rested.

Evelyn watches them for a moment.

There's the feeling in her gut of things grinding together. It's like heartburn

__

Uphold the law. Protect the innocent.

She closes her eyes and opens them once. Then she picks up her pen and smoothes down the newspaper before reading again.

__

Fin


End file.
